Neighbors 2, the Rare Sequel That Doesn't Suck

Neighbors 2 has plenty of known ingredients of other great sequels. Like Godfather 2, eviction notices and ruinous neighborhood parties drive the plot. Like Aliens, we have returned to the scene of the original hostility. Also like in Aliens, women are fucking shit up using gravity and human ingenuity. As with Lethal Weapon 2, Neighbors 2 has a lot of vengeance and bloodshed (well, period jokes) and chase scenes. Like Sister Act 2 it has rad ensemble sequences. Like Terminator 2, it’s about growing up and also about being a parent. Also like the Terminator series, I liked it better than the first.

Here’s where we are: Amateur-hour parents Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) have a cute kid. They still live where they lived. Only now the frat next door has become the home of an independent sorority founded by Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz) in resistance to the stifling rules at other sororities and gross frat antics. Dejected after his best friend (Dave Franco) gets engaged, Teddy Sanders (portrayed by human muscle tee Zac Efron) helps the sorority build their utopia of weed smoke and bikinis and Converse sneakers. JOIN THEM, WON’T YOU?

It’s an easy invitation. These are people you want to visit again. How are Rose and Seth doing with that baby? How is Zac Efron maintaining his abs? And this is critical in justifying the sequel—because sometimes, you want to leave characters the hell alone. The first Hangover movie, for example, has a galvanizing sense of entrapment. When the second movie revisits the same spring-trap, the effect is asphyxiating. It's nearly impossible to give a second round of sympathy-attention for the same self-created disaster.

But as in college and life, Neighbors has not allowed the same people to remain on campus. Instead, it has welcomed a new freshman class. Like all freshmen, they want to have fun more than anything in this glorious world.

Neighbors 2 isn’t as slapdash-spontaneous as the first (airbags, airbags, airbags). It is weirder—especially in the physical-comedy arena. It uses the slapstick from the original as a jumping-off point to go HAM on some sight gags and departures from gravity. (Our congratulations to the Neighbors 2 stunt coordinator for being a glorious professional. There is not a staircase that isn’t tumbled down, nor a car that isn't destroyed.) But crucially, the themes remain. Rose and Seth are still waging a war on younger versions of themselves, susceptible to the temptations of Irresponsibility and Staying Up Until 5 A.M., as they try to move on from these urges themselves and raise a new person.

Neighbors 2 also manages to justify its central tension more urgently than the first Neighbors. When a pack of men fought for their right to rage in the original, it was in good fun. When a pack of women fight for theirs, it’s because the damn patriarchy fought them first: Sororities, the movie notes, are not allowed by the Greek system to openly have parties.

Poor college student groups, life is so unfair to them! Obviously, it’s a joke. But there's real bias in the system, and when one character tries to explain to Efron's Teddy that a sorority's right to throw a rager isn't the same as their “legal right to party,” Teddy's reaction is, essentially, fuck that. The subtext is that it is important to be able to party on your own terms. Partying becomes political, like for those poor kids in Footloose. Neighbors 2 asks which side of history you want to be on—and don’t you want to be on the side of partying?

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